Sapphire Lakes
by Dinoval
Summary: The windmills turn silently in the night, their height warning lights occasionally bathing the waves in a slow pulse of red light. A girl drags herself out of the tide and onto the rocks, clothes drenched as she gasps and coughs. A burning light of triumph illuminates her eyes. "And so it begins."


**So this is a random thing I dug up. It's a little trial I had of a new writing style. I thought I'd post it since I've been practically nonexistent lately. ^-^'**

* * *

Gentle waves create a soft whooshing sound as they lap at a rocky outcropping jutting into the sea.

The windmills turn silently in the night, their height warning lights occasionally bathing the waves in a slow pulse of red light.

A girl drags herself out of the tide and onto the rocks, clothes drenched as she gasps and coughs. A burning light of triumph illuminates her eyes. "And so it begins."

* * *

Chief Commander Hiwatari Satoshi stares semi-angrily at the empty schedule on his PDA. _Surly this is his doing. Dark has been inactive for far too long._

_You could always allow me to kill the boy, _Krad purrs.

Satoshi narrows his eyes as he feels someone trace his chin. He jerks his head away from the invisible force. _Leave me alone! I will capture Dark and end this curse without you!_

Krad only laughs richly. _Of course, Satoshi-sama._ Normally the White Wing would make an effort to steal Satoshi's body at this point, but he is content at the moment. Besides, he knows that his tamer needs nourishment if his body is to stay in a somewhat life-supporting state; it is becoming increasingly apparent that Satoshi is suffering self-induced malnutrition in attempt to end the curse.

The phone rings and Satoshi grabs it.

He smirks when he hears the news. "I'll be right there."

* * *

The usual floodlights and police cars surround the museum.

Groups of people mill around the police barriers, straining their necks and standing on their toes in attempt to see the great Phantom Thief at work.

There must be as many officers outside on crowd control as there are inside waiting for Dark.

Amongst the mob are the Harada twin sisters and Niwa Daisuke.

The younger of the sisters expresses sheer glee at the prospect of seeing Dark, while the older rolls her eyes and grovels to leave.

Daisuke is too distracted to pay them much attention. _This isn't like Hiwatari-kun,_ the redhead worries as he tries his best to peer around an officer. He can just barely see Satoshi walking calmly into the building, his hands in his pockets.

_Look there,_ Krad points mentally.

Satoshi turns around at the top of the entrance steps.

A patch of red hair catches his eye.

_Niwa?_ he wonders, _why is he out there?_ Satoshi bows his head with an annoyed huff and continues inside. _He'd better hurry._

_How __dare__ someone use my name!_ Dark seethes angrily one moment and the next continues arrogantly, _I guess I __am__so__ admired._ He winks smugly.

Daisuke suppresses a sigh. _Maybe, but why is Hiwatari-kun fooled by a forged signature? He's too smart to believe in a forged warning letter._

Dark taps his chin thoughtfully. _True. He's never had problems with fakes before. It's almost time; let's watch._

If they were waiting for explosions, they were in the wrong place. Exactly at midnight, several things happened at once. Water mains around the city burst, flooding anything unfortunate enough to be nearby into a marsh. Alarms blared warnings at animal shelters, activating the fire safety features and releasing hundreds of animals free into the night. To add to the sudden chaos, the entire city's electricity fails moments later, extinguishing all lights like a match.

All is utter turmoil as the whole crowd stumbles around Daisuke in fear.

Everyone except one. One girl calmly removes her dark glasses and glides around the people with ease. In the darkness, she lithely steps between the frazzled door guards without challenge and enters the museum effortlessly.

The guards inside are not much more of a problem for her. Even the ones that have flashlights are too surprised by the sounds and darkness to even think of using them. The terrified screams draw them outside.

The girl walks the final hallway with the ease of no guards. She simply walks into the room where a lone boy stands stolidly watching over the particular Artwork designated by the warning letter.

Satoshi, though facing away from the door, hears her catlike entrance and sighs. _Not another one of them…_ He turns to face the newcomer.

Her face is only partially illuminated when she steps into the moonlight creeping in from a window. She wears odd clothes. Underneath a white cape and a seemingly normal olive t-shirt and blue jeans, she sports a grey cat-suit under that.

"This is a police restricted area," Satoshi explains tiredly, "why don't you just leave now and save us both the trouble." _Stupid Dark fangirls…_

With inhuman speed and without warning she tackles Satoshi to the ground. The girl smiles, a disturbing thing. Her eyes are even more unnatural; the irises are impossibly golden and her pupils thin and catlike while the sclera is inhumanly glossy black.

Satoshi's breath quickens marginally. _What is she?_ Without breaking eye contact, he reaches for an artifact in his pocket.

_Nope._ Her arm moves like lightning and Satoshi finds himself death-gripped around the wrist. _Try again._

_What the- ?_ Satoshi, surprised but wasting no time, quickly reaches with his other hand for a closer relic in his shirt pocket.

But she somehow out speeds him and this time pins his arm above his head, just below the elbow. The girl's wicked smile only widens at tiny amount of shock that escapes Satoshi's carefully walled façade of emotionlessness. _Ho, this is fun. Wait, now he'll try the crystals…!_

_How can she counter my every move?_ Satoshi wonders as he struggles to fight back feelings of surprise and horror, _I'm staring into her eyes, they haven't moved._ Twisting the wrist of the arm above his head, he manages to free three blue-green gems from their concealed hold in his sleeve.

Before he can grab the toothpick-like crystals, the girl rapidly turns her head down over his neck, close enough for her breath to feel humid on his skin. _If this doesn't work, I'm in for a lot of pain and questioning._ She opens her mouth, revealing a full set of dagger-like teeth that seem far too long to fit in her closed mouth.

As she predicted, Satoshi stiffens and stares at the fangs. And so his mind races, bodily paralyzed for fear of his life, at the about-to-be-vampired position he lies in on the cold marble floor of an empty museum, probably breathing his last breaths. Suddenly it occurs to him, _this __could__ be the end. … The end of the pain. The end of the suffering. … __The end of the__curse__._ He thinks the last sentence with more joy then all he has felt since he turned fourteen combined. Satoshi closes his eyes and relaxes, exposing more of his delicate throat. He grins tiredly, exhaustion from the constant suffering finally washing through him and gladness for it to be finally coming to curtain.

Krad curses profusely, knowing that it is too late. If he were to change places with Satoshi now he would risk slicing his own throat. Even overshadowing him would be a death wish at this point. _I cannot take over the body if it is dead!_

_Good, it worked._ The girl smiles toothily and releases her grip on Satoshi's now limp higher arm. Without distancing her teeth from his throat, she gently brushes her fingers through his cerulean hair.

…_What? _Satoshi slowly opens his heavy eyelids and once more meets the eyes of the girl. "… Kill me," he demands raspingly when she does not react.

She huffs in amusement and pity. _Poor thing, he just wants it to end._ The girl removes her hand from his hair and places it on the floor to support herself. With her other hand, the girl releases his wrist and searches for something in the pouch tied around her waist. She gingerly incises the needle-thick tips of her fangs into his throat enough to draw pinpricks of blood and keep Satoshi busy.

"Just do it!" Satoshi pleads wretchedly, tears of suffering creating tiny rivers down into his hair.

Finding what she wanted, the girl removes a hinged circular object from the pouch.

Satoshi watches, stunned, as her fangs shorten.

"This is going to hurt," the girl mentions seductively. She moves her head away and brings the object down on Satoshi's throat in one swift motion.

The object snaps closed around his neck by its own accord. It shrinks and, even though it stops and never gets tight enough to choke Satoshi, the air is filled with agonized cries._ I-I'm being ripped apart! What's… happening to me?!_

The girl quickly gets to her feet and backs away emotionlessly as Satoshi's body convulses and withers in torment.

Krad fights with feral instinct to emerge and be rid of the agony.

Satoshi's body appears to be excruciatingly stuck mid-switch. His eyes quickly flash between cerulean and gold. His hair has grown to halfway down his back and is striped with alternating colors of cerulean and gold. His snow white wings are his only normal-ish feature. Somehow he manages to clamber to his hands and knees. He claws despairingly at the collar around his neck before collapsing and becoming still. Silent besides his panting breaths, he slowly opens his eyes. They are as sapphire as lakes at midnight. Very small specks of cerulean and gold flake on the irises like tiny stars in a night sky. He blinks rapidly, confused. _What… what happened…? The pain… it's gone._

_Aw, that look in his eyes is like a newborn lamb! So cute!_ The girl claps her hands together in pleasure before quickly kneeling down beside him. "Hush now," she soothes and brushes a stray lock of hair from his face, "how do you feel, Satoshi?"

Satoshi stares wordlessly up at the strange girl. _I cannot sense Krad in the way I normally do. He is most definitely still… __somewhere__, but…_ "…What have you done to me…?" he asks slowly, surprising himself at the Krad-like richness of his voice.

"It's a long story." The girl shrugs and stands up. She offers her hand. "Make haste, we must flee from here."

"What?" Satoshi glares at her. _I'm not going anywhere with __you__._ "Tell me what you have done."

She rolls her eyes and mumbles, "so this is how you were before. If that's what you want then…" She uses her other hand to reach under her shirt and withdraw a pendent hung on a fine silver chain. "Look."

Satoshi blinks when she swings the sapphire at him.

The deep blue stone is a perfectly cut oval held by dainty vines of silver. A slit of black divides it like a cat's eye. It seems to be the perfect size to fit into one's palm.

_I've never seen an Artwork like that,_ Satoshi ponders, almost hypnotized by it. He jumps in surprise when the black slit dilates and seems to focus on him. _It-it's really an eye!?_

"Oh, relax, it just recognizes you as wearing its sister piece." The girl shrugs as if it were obvious.

"Commander Hiwatari!" a guard yells from somewhere nearby.

_This is taking too long._ The girl straitens, on guard, and lets the pendent drop back onto her shirt. "We must leave now. Make haste!"

_I do not trust her, yet do I really have a choice? She altered me somehow… not just in appearance, but something… __inside__…_ Satoshi grits his teeth as flashlight beams and footsteps fill the nearby hallways.

The girl glares at him. "If you won't move willingly, I'll make you!" _I won't allow you to be captured after all of the planning!_

The 'eye' of the pendent responds by widening.

Satoshi gazes at it. _If that Artwork really does have the ability to control me… I should not risk it._ He nods seriously and forces his shoulders to relax. "I will go willingly."

"Good." Her smile quickly turns into a frown when the outside noise becomes closer. She grabs the edges of her cloak and draws them in around herself. "For the last time, make haste!"

Biting his inner lip, Satoshi extends his snowy wings and beats them gingerly. To his pleasure, he realizes there is no pain in flight either.

The girl throws her cloak backwards.

The cape wrinkles and folds with the sudden movement, defying physics and continuing to morph into bat-like wings.

The girl flaps these wings as simply as walking and jumps into the air. She flies up to the skylight window and pushes out a glass pane she had loosened earlier. "Come," she commands simply and wings out.

Satoshi follows wordlessly.

The cool night air rushes over them.

_He is discovering it_, the girl thinks happily as she watches Satoshi test his newly found ability.

Carefully staying nonaggressive towards his supervisor, Satoshi soars high into the blackness before swooping downwards in a tight spiral. _Why can I do this?_ He glances at the girl. _Surely she is not human, but what is she?_ _I have never seen an Artwork like her…_ Satoshi blinks in surprise. _Wait, how can I see this well?! The electricity is out; it should be pitch black, not light as twilight!_ Forgetting he was trying to appear submissive, he narrows his eyes at the girl and growls, "you have some explaining to do."

The girl smiles her eerie grin. "I'm surprised you have not demanded that sooner. First though." She points to a cliff on the mountain they have approached. "We land." She hovers down most of the way before her wings suddenly give out. She sticks the landing easily and her flightless cloak streams down innocently back into a resting position. The girl turns to him. _Your turn._

Satoshi expertly drifts down and lands uneventfully.

The girl looks disappointed. "I was hoping you would crash without experience to be honest. In here." She pushes aside a bush and reveals a small cave entrance.

"… You first," Satoshi requests.

She shrugs and hunches over as she enters the cave. _He'd better not run away._ "Don't try anything."

Satoshi follows her obediently. _Something tells me that she's not bluffing about her control over me…_

They emerge into a sizeable subterranean cave. Glowworms illuminate the walls.

The girl sits down and gestures at a glistening pool of water. "Look inside."

Satoshi obeys. The refection is alien to him. The eyes are completely foreign with their unearthly sapphire hue and starry specks. The alternating colored hair is at a strange length that is almost feminine, amusingly. He stares with particular interest at the collar. Somehow, to his uneasiness, he had already become accustom to the skintight embrace of cool metal around his neck. In its center, a sapphire that matches Satoshi's eyes and the girl's pendent glows ominously by its own power. Between the design and the rustic black look of the metal, the collar rather comically appears as if it was ripped off a wine stand. Satoshi traces his fingers over the sapphire and its pattern swirls like water.

* * *

**And that's as far as I got! I may play with it some more, or continue it if there is enough interest (I don't ask for much).**

**Audience participation time! Who is this mysterious girl and what are these Artworks called? Write your submissions in a review, go!**


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